The Pretty Tea Party
by crushingsky
Summary: A child left to her own devices wages a hideous, unseen war. Chapter 2 is up.
1. Chapter 1

**The Pretty Tea Party**

**Chapter One  
How the children slay**

The courtiers sat deathly silent at the table. Heedless, the birds sang in the trees anyway. Syrupy sunlight seeped through the leaves to tickle whiskers, ears, or the occasional button eye. Not a one would so much as twitch, though. The furniture was a mishmash of wicker and faded wood of varying finish. The cups and platers were of crude fired clay, chipped scrimshaw, or cracked chipstone. No one would argue that it was not the grandest court of the free manors. Indeed, few would dare to argue at all.

Paeia Mayven stood gazing at the assembled sundry and considered favoring them with a smile. Instead, she decided that there should be something there that should displease her. The tableware had been undisturbed since she last held court. Her household staff and retainers had likewise remained unmoved. She had already punished those who looked stupid for the crime of looking stupid. _Nothing for it, then. _She sighed, smoothed her dress, and sat down in a high-backed wicker chair at the head of the table.

A pair of butterflies sat on the table, their crimson laquered wings spread slightly apart as if prepared for flight. Paeia picked them up and used them to pin back her shoulder length brown tresses. She selected an elegant cup of the finest select ivory and poured some tea from the sterling pot on the table. Her eyes closed as the copper colored brew rolled over her tongue and snaked into her belly. When she could feel it coiled there and ready to strike she finally smiled. She licked her lips immaculately of any leavings before opening her chestnut eyes.

"Begin."

They stirred and shuffled nervously. Rod'ger, her chamberlain, was the first to speak.

"My lady. The eastern front is quiet this morning although Old Scratch reports strangers under the bridge again. Miss Wuthers has had another litter. Lady Margolie is engaged at a party at her family manor and apparently neglected to invite you. Your brothers are still busy on their...project. Two emissaries and a supplicant await your pleasure."

The orb of Rod'ger's left eye rolled around in its shattered socket as he gave his report though his pink veined marble face was otherwise impassive. Paeia steepled her fingers in thought, her thumbs tickling her lip. _Why wasn't I invited?_

"Notify the emissaries that I will receive them momentarily. The supplicant I shall deal with last."

Rod'ger nodded and limped away with all the dignity that his red and green jester's costume afforded him. Paeia had broken his leg when he had tried to run away, once. After punishing him, she had repaired it but left the leg deliberately shortened so that he would be hobbled.

"_How_ do you _do_, Miss Wuthers!"

The plump matronly bunny tittered from her place at the tea table. She brushed back her lone floppy ear that hung from beneath her blue bonet and smoothed her dress before responding, "Tis true, I'm afraid. Hatched them as the sun rose. Oh, but they are such darlings, though!"

"Indeed. I can imagine what a precious sight they must make. Pink twitching noses, bright curious eyes, their tiny paws kicking...and their cutsie little ears! I would just _have_ to give one to each of my friends!"

"Oh, but that would be so very lovely."

"I think not, Miss Wuthers. I expect that they should be drowned by next morning."

Miss Wuthers laughed ingratiatingly. Paeia heard footsteps approaching. She did not turn her head to see who it was. She could tell easily enough _what _it was by the soft steps and confident swagger of their pacing. _You would not strut about so easily if my mother were here._

"Oh _my!_ A _tea party_! I fear I have intruded and without an invitation! A most grievous faux pas! Please, accept my _humble_ apologies, my ..._lady_." The woman courtsied at the last, looking ridiculous doing so in leather breeches.

Paeia turned her head, her pale pink lips parted in a smile of toothy graciousness. She let her eyes take in the woman's features without seeming to focus on any one of them in particular. Dark hair, dusky skin. Unassuming traveling garb, small sensible carry-on, her exaggerated courtesy betrayed a muddled dales custom. Short sword at the waist, a lute slung across one shoulder, a silver pin of the harp on her lapel.

"Not at _all. _It has been too long since I have had guests. Are you here for the fair?"

"Oh! How could I not be?" She struck a swooning starry eyed pose, one hand at her cheek. Her eyes then widened and her fingertips flew to her full red lips as she let out a startled gasp. "Dear me! What are those _delicious_ looking pastries!" The woman said, pointing to an empty platter on the table.

"Why, those are cinnamon dainties, fluttered with sugar sauce."

"I don't suppose...oh, but I _musn't..._but _oh..._might I try one?"

"Oh, but of course!"

"Oh, but I _couldn't!_"

"Oh, but you _must!_ You are my _guest!_" Paiea implored for all the world as if she would simply die if the woman did not just try one.

"Well...I suppose one wouldn't hurt," The woman plucked up one of the pastries, "...mmhh...oh...ohm...mrngph...oh..._magnifishent...OH!"_

She devoured another dainty, then another. She began working her way around the table, sampling from all the empty plates.

"Butter crisps! And jelly cones! You must have such exquisite help!"

The menagerie of dolls and stuffies watched the feast in still silence. Paeia only smiled, inclining her head this way and that in gestures of accomodation for the woman's indulgence.

"That was delightful. I feel I must burst," the woman said, licking her fingers.

"Would you like some tea?" Paeia asked.

"Thank you but I must decline. My gluttony will be the death of me, I'm afraid. I do have business with your father that needs attending. Perhaps another time."

The woman waggled her fingers at Paeia then plucked a flower from a tree and held it to her nose as she departed with a jaunty step towards her father's manor. Paeia watched her with narrowed eyes.

Pick's whiskers tickled her cheek. "Shall I send a detail to follow her, my lady?"

"No," Paeia said, "I will not be goaded into a misstep. Let the cow play her silly game."

The imp sat at the foot of the table across from Paeia. He was about half Paeia's height, paunchy and naked with red skin. He had horns of course. He also had the requisite bat-like wings and the obligatory spear point tail. It amused Paeia that he so closely resembled the illustrations from her books of bedtime stories. He looked forlornly at the empty plates on the table. "Do you have anything more substantial to eat?" he asked.

"If you find my hospitality lacking, Seschal, then you know exactly where you can go."

"Well, on to business then. As you may know, my overseer, Mister Imbal wishes to settle his accounts before--"

"Would you like some tea?"

"Eh, thank you, no. As I was saying--"

"You must be very busy with this coming holiday of yours. You only celebrate it what...every thousand years?"

"It's not a celebration per se, we see it as a reordering which is why--"

"Oh bother, Seschal!" Paeia said laughing "We have never not been unable to disagree on anything, haven't we?"

The imps eyes darted around nervously as he quickly tried to form a response, "uh...yes...I mean no! I...I mean wait...I...eh--"

"And if we cannot agree on anything then there is no account between us, is there?"

Seschal worked his mouth and tried to find his tongue. "Eh...all else aside some agreements are implicit and unspoken. There is the matter of your brothers and their recent activities, for instance. You are not unaware of them?"

"Oh. That." Paeia said, studying her fingernails.

On a lark, her older brothers Kuris and Jeorde had ventured to dig a hole down to hell. They worked on it whenever they had nothing better to do, which was all too often. They had also rebuffed Paeia's offer to supervise the operation. "Go play with your silly dolls. This is _men's_ work," Jeorde had said, laughing.

"They seem quite persistent," said Seschal.

"Had you any brothers?"

"I don't remember much from before the scourging of the infernum."

"Well, if you could remember then you would agree that they are a pointless bother. In any case it will be some time before they reach the first circle."

"Any hole to hell is just deep enough."

"This is my tea party and my rules. I will say what is deep enough."

"Be that as it may, there are your rules, there are our rules, and there are _the_ rules. You are treading a fine line. If you are not careful you may find you've wandered into someone else's little game. It is not Mister Imbal's wish to antagonize you but he _is_ very impatient to seal this deal. For someone who makes as many enemies as you do, an agreement with us would bring you a measure of security that--"

Paeia slapped her hands on the table. Her expression was frosty. "I do believe that I have had enough of Imbal's _concern_ for my welfare. I know exactly what the wishes of your kind are and you are disingenious to pretend otherwise. You are _devils_, after all. Should I decide to enter a pact, it will be of a time and manner that pleases me and not otherwise. Your well-mannered facade has ceased to amuse me. Begone."

And just like that, Seschal changed. His face contorted in obscene rage. His black talons tore deep grooves in the table top.

"You little _bitch-whore!_ Your insolence will make you ours one way or another. The legions will be lined from horizon to horizon to have at you and you'll be begging me to make it stop!"

During his tirade, Seschal had not noticed the figures who had unobtrusively closed in behind him. Paeia rang a spoon against an empty tea cup and they were upon him. The imp was pummeled and stabbed. Clearly surprised but undaunted he fought back tooth and nail. Paeia had torn the stuffing from her guards and replaced it with lead shavings. Nonetheless they were tossed around as if they were mere toys. She was unprepared to witness the pure ferocity and hideous strength of the fiend.

Seschal tore at fabric and fur with his claws and snarled and howled like the damned. Overwhelmed by sheer numbers he still refused to die. Paiea was interested to note that his blood was black and reeked abominably. The imp tried to fly away but one of his wings had been pinned to the table by a hat-pin. Finally sucumbing to his wounds, Seschal howled and dissapeared in an explosion of fire and brimstone.

Paeia's guards had suceeded to be sure but it had not been the one-sided slaughter she hoped it would be. She would need to spend valuable time rethinking her strategy. Time that could have been spent playing. The butterflies in her hair fluttered their wings in irritation.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two  
Mourning Gory**

Paeia sat at the vanity and brushed her hair. She had required the servants to lace her into the dress but didn't like them to touch her any more than necessary. _All the better for them to wring their hands uselessly and fret over Nevel_, she thought. Her bedroom window was yet dark and already the house was busy preparing for the fair. As the sole lady in residence, Paeia had duties to prepare for as well. She stood and examined herself in the mirror. She was not truely a lady, or even a maiden. Such things seemed terribly distant to her and she was in no hurry but there was a role to be filled and roles need filling.

She tried an aristocratic woman's bow, back straight with a slight bending of the knees and hands clasped to the fronts of her thighs but discarded it almost immediately. _Far too presumptuous_, she thought. She tried another bow with her legs nearly straight, back low and bowed like a dancer, while pulling the hem of her dress with one hand and a flourishing gesture for the other. She liked the form but it was more suitable for an artisan or performer than for what her father aspired to be.

Proper etiquette was a confused affair among the free manors. There was no central court from which standards of conduct could be set. One house might be of highbred Cormyrean custom, another could be a family of upjumped squatters with no manners at all. Anyone from far and near who had the power to raise a house and keep it could call themselves a lord. Houses would also fall at times, sitting silent until someone ventured to claim them. Sometimes staying silent if claimed by stranger things.

"How do you do?" Paeia asked the mirror, trying yet another courtsey.

She repeated the phrase and gesture, varying her presentation with each iteration. Each syllable was exaggerated in its turn, each muscle of body and face was tightened and relaxed as she cleansed herself of all that was not deliberate. Seven faces were inset on the painted wooden border that surrounded the mirror. They were pale and expressionless, seeming more like masks than true faces. Their eyes were closed but the girl felt their presence upon her all the same. She smiled and blew them a kiss before turning to leave the room.

A jumble of noise greeted her. Nevel was screaming. Things were being jostled and dropped. Kuris and Jeorde were fighting exuberantly. Her father was yelling. Something broke. Sounds of dismay from the servants. The busy work of hammer and saw. _In the house? _Someone was weeping.

Paeia walked to the railing of the upper landing to assess what was being wrought in the foyer below. Flames flickered in the many crystal lanterns that hung on chains suspended from the cieling. Scaffolding was being hastily constructed by conscripted yeomen while her father was busy ordering with satisfaction and nodding with authority. Another of the fine vases lay in shatters. Two more tiles of the marble floor had also been broken. All to join the medly of things whose brokeness had not yet been undone. _Mother will be furious._

"Father, what _is_ all this?" Paeia asked as she descended the stairs.

Her father's bloodshot eyes flicked over her as he wiped his poorly shaven mouth with the back of his hand.

"Braken didn't come through on their part so now the rest of us has to pick up the slack. And if it don't get picked up right quick we'll all be sitting in the dirt with the rest of the lot!" He said, raising his voice for the workers' benefit.

Lord Medger of house Mayven was wearing his finery that morning, a creme colored doublet that went not well at all with his greasy dark hair and weathered face. _Where are the clothes mother bought?_

"In the house, though? What about this mess? What will mother say?"

Her father's lips curdled and he waved a dismissive hand. "I'll send to the dales for a mason to redo the floor. I'll buy your mother a new vase."

Kuris and Jeorde sat on a bench against the wall, trembling with barely restrained energy. Their faces were marked from where they had been cuffed a few times.

Paeia left the foyer through a side door. She walked through the day room, the side pantry, then through the maids' quarters. Nevel's screaming grew louder as she drew near. It was a loud, insistent, piercing shriek that the infant was given to whenever he wasn't given to sleeping, which wasn't nearly enough for the house's piece of mind.

Helda, Nevel's nursemaid, was a burly, haggard woman. She sat in a chair, bouncing the screeching bundle on her knee and making the perfunctory shooshing noises. Her face was a rictus of shattered nerve. She seemed to be rocking herself for comfort as much as anything.

"Oh, Paeia! He's so precious. Don't you want to--"

"_No."_

Paeia did not pause on her way through the nursery. She entered another room with many shuttered windows, the maids' 'tea room'. Tea was the least illicit of things plied in this room, she knew. _Oh, to be a fly on the wall. _She opened a door and walked outside.

Paeia could see little in the fog dulled moonlight but figured it would probably burn off later in the day. The mist season was just starting and had not yet become too obstinate. Hiking her dress around her knees to prevent it from getting wet, she walked into the woods. People of the manors referred to the treeline as the High Forest but Paeia dared not enter too deeply, to where the _real_ High Forest began. There, the rules changed. And not all to Paeia's liking.

It was in a copse of trees that she had planted her trap and found that it still bore fruit. The trap was a circle of toadstools she had carefully cultivated for the purpose and then transplanted to the wood. The fruit was blue krissies this time. She pulled a wooden box from its hiding place beneath a shrub and rummaged for the tools she would need. The blue krissies began to weep, as if they knew what was coming. The sound was of tiny strings played almost too high to be audible. Paeia hummed along as she unhooded a lantern filled with glow flies. The soft green light illuminated her workspace well enough without threatening her privacy.

"Good morning, ladies. Did you have a nice dance?"

The blue krissies were a small huddle of pale, naked bodies, clinging to one another and trembling within the circle. Their large, slanted eyes lacked pupils or whites and were a polished blue that matched their translucent wings, hence the name. The sorrow and fear was a familiar scene that had become boring to Paiea. The scant remains of what she assumed to be the male lay at their feet.

The toadstools had been grown with a diet of iron rich soil and dappled with egg paints to present confounding patterns. Such a crude trap would never work long, if at all in snaring craftier, more powerful game, but was sufficent for those ruled by baser instincts. Apparently, the blue krissies had been sucessfuly wooed by a suitor who then led them in a frenzy to a suitable place for his first and final liaison. The females had then devoured him while taking turns mating with his twitching corpse.

Paeia slipped a heavy leather mit over one hand. Anything lighter could be sliced open by the krissies' wings. She grabbed one of the blue krissies with the mit, selected a small sharp knife from her tools, and began her work. Sitting on a blanket, she hummed a song of her own then. It was one that her mother had taught her called 'The Merry Widow'.

"Is all well, my lady?" asked Pick.

"Well enough. I will be attending the fair with my family soon. I dare say they will try something today."

Paeia could not see Pick's beady black eyes or twisted nose and teeth, but she knew they were out there, ugly and twitching. Pick was one of the few allowed to leave the table at night. Paeia tossed the krissie aside and selected another that squirmed and shrieked hysterically.

He hissed, "I wouldn't be surprised. We haven't discovered how they're crossing the river yet and we can't protect you at the fair. Perhaps you could find a way to beg off attending?"

"With my mother absent, my participation is mandatory, even if only as window dressing. I will have my father's men to protect me, such as they are."

"I see." Pick was silent. "...my lady?"

"Yes?"

"Uhm...Old Scratch saw Rolly last night. He's on his way home."

"Hmm. Is that all then?"

"Yes, my lady."

"You are dismissed."

Paeia tossed the krissie to the heap and grabbed the last. Rod'ger had been leaving the table at night for places and purposes unknown. Rod'ger was not allowed to leave the tea party at all. Paeia had said nothing yet, but she knew. Pick would have known but had said nothing to her either, even when given a private opportunity. _What are they hiding? Who else is in on it?_ Intrigue in her own court irked her like no other threat could.

She regarded the krissie in her clutch who had passed beyond trembling to unresponsive flacidity. She was almost like a little doll with her high, sculpted cheek bones, parted mouth, and silk black hair. This one was scarred though. Something had clawed her across the chest and down one flank, tearing away a breast. The wounds looked as if they were old and had not healed well. Paeia touched her with a bare finger, feeling the supple softness of the krissie's flesh, and the twisted scar tissue of the torn breast. The girl marveled that she had survived long in a world that so mindlessly pursued beauty. The slight limbs and torso that were more elongated than a humans yet still aluring for their feminine promise lay lax between the soft strokes of Paeia's fingers. The krissie looked lifeless. But Paeia knew she wasn't dead, she was playing. She allowed herself a small smile and gently carresed the krissie's cheek.

"You're a clever one, aren't you? Do you like to play games? I like to play them to--"

The krissie hissed and spat into Paeia's eye, a silvery thread that seared and penetrated. Paeia snarled and squeezed until she heard the bones pop.


End file.
